For our last trip we used DDP for our meals. The previous trip we did not use DDP. This has lead me to debate if it was 'worth it' or not.

One of the things that we noticed was that despite having DDP we still spent quite a bit of money on food anyway. Between tipping and adding extras (appetizers, drinks, etc) we ended up with a sizable bill at the end of our trip.

We also ended up with way more food than we would normally order with DDP. We would have ordinarily ordered dessert maybe 2 or 3 times on a trip like that, however we got dessert with every meal. At other times we had meals that we wouldn't ordinarily have because we felt obligated to use all of our credits because they had already been paid for.

Item-for-item, DDP saves you money. However I think for us we ultimately spent more money on food than we ordinarily would have. On our trip without DDP we spent around $200 per person on food, while with DDP we ended up spending almost $400. (there were 2 more days on our DDP trip, but that's not enough to account for the difference) Also, my tipping was much heavier using DDP because the total bill would have been much larger than it would be otherwise.

What do you all think? Does your family save money using DDP? Or have you found that you send less without it?